We've gone from "the process has performed an illegal operation" and "file not found" to "Oops!" and "we looked everywhere, but..."
That's the sort of phrasing you don't want to inflict on everyday users.
(Also, the word "oops" was chosen because it connotes "something went wrong and it's our fault" -- probably chosen to avoid implying that it was the user's fault. Really ingenious, again, if your goal is to keep users comfortable rather than fully informing them.)
And right here is why modern tech is so condescending.
The language you use for this is important because it shapes the way you think about the difference. The way it is often phrased is in the form of "we're special, better, smarter, people than those dumb people who have no hope of understanding the arcane magicks we are naturally attune to". Which is of course bull. We have specialized knowledge and familiarity from spending years working with this stuff. That's it.
> [UNIX]... seems to say "Oh, you don't belong to the super-secret cabal of users who know these arcane commands? Fuck you, then!"
It seems to say that because that's exactly what UNIX says. They don't even name commands sensibly, not even in 2019. Discoverability basically doesn't exist.
Um, you do know that Unix used to come with user manuals? Like, oh I dunno, the vast majority of software in the 1980s and early 1990s? The designers of Unix and comparable systems were perfectly aware that command-line incantations cannot be figured out simply by sitting at the system and playing with it; this is very much not what it was designed for!
If discoverability by novice users is a priority, then that is an argument for menu-driven, interactive interfaces and UIs - which could well be built on top of something like UNIX. But documentation is always going to be important.
The kind of documentation that Unix comes with is of little use to people who already have some specific training in computing disciplines.
I learned the command line from a book that came in a Redhat boxed set.